CX. Italia! too, Italia! looking on thee, Who glorify thy consecrated pages; Thou wert the throne and grave of empires; still, The fount at which the panting mind assuages Her thirst of knowledge, quaffing there her fill, Flows from the eternal source of Rome's imperial hill. CXL. Thus far have I proceeded in a theme We We are not what we have been, and to deem CXII. And for these words, thus woven into song, I stood and stand alone,-remember'd or forgot. CXIIL I have not loved the world, nor the world me; Nor coin'd my cheek to smiles, nor cried aloud They could not deem me one of such; I stood Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could Had I not filed" my mind, which thus itself subdued. CXIV. I have not loved the world, nor the world me,- Though I have found them not, that there may be 42 CXV My daughter! with thy name this song begun ; Can be so wrapt in thee; thou art the friend To whom the shadows of far CXVI. To aid thy mind's developement, to watch And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss.— I know not what is there, yet something like to this. CXVII. Yet, though dull Hate as duty should be taught, Though the grave closed between us,-'twere the same, And an attainment,-all would be in vain, Still thou would'st love me, still that more than life retain. CXVIII. The child of love, though born in bitterness, And nurtured in convulsion. Of thy sire These were the elements, and thine no less. As yet such are around thee, but thy fire Shall be more temper'd, and thy hope far higher. Sweet be thy cradled slumbers! O'er the sea And from the mountains where I now respire, Fain would I waft such blessing upon thee, As, with a sigh, I deem thou might'st have been to me!" NOTES TO CANTO THE THIRD. 1.-Page 129. CANTO THE THIRD. ["Begun July 10th, 1816. Diodati. near Lake of Geneva."-MS.] 2. Stanza i., line 2. ADA! sole daughter of my house and heart? [In a letter, dated Verona, November 6, 1816, Lord Byron says--" By the way, Ada's name (which I found in our pedigree, under king John's reign), is the same with that of the sister of Charlemagne, as I redde, the other day, in a book treating of the Rhine."] 3. Stanza i., line 8. Whither I know not; but the hour's gone by, [Lord Byron quitted England, for the second and last time, on the 25th of April, 1816, attended by William Fletcher and Robert Rushton, the "yeoman" and "page" of Canto I.; his physician, Dr. Polidori; and a Swiss valet.] 4.-Stanza ii., line 6. And the rent canvass fluttering strew the gale, ["And the rent canvass tattering."--MS.] But in Man's dwellings he became a thing [The reason, he used to say, why he disliked society was because the follies and passions of others excited the evil qualities of his own nature.] |